Full circle

It is the same me from 20 years ago when this now octogenarian programmer attended a conference on Christian Theology and the Epistle to the Hebrews in St Andrews Scotland. I was full of structuralism seen by recurring words and their patterns of chiasm and so on. I had diagrammed Hebrews in multiple colours -- so proud, and a tad more or less ignorant than I am now. 

Oh I had diagrams!

My top level diagram of Hebrew from 2005 or so

Each part with a diagram symbol points to a subdiagram (not implemented in this static image). I used a proprietary diagramming tool for translation of the psalms one word at a time. Pretty, but slow self-teaching on many fronts.

I don't yet know what words I will use to express this homily today. It is probably wise for me to use slow consideration of the theology in the use of words to convey the creator and sustainer of our life.

M. C. Escher

I hope to get through the 19th century text of Hebrews as typed by the vine of David and available here.  Having already seen errors in the typing of qadma and pashta, I will have to check the photocopies of the original at times of doubt. The first four verses are in the previous post together with the music that has been composed with the text by Margoliouth using the prose te'amim of the Tanach. I had never heard of the music 20 years ago even though I remember a conversation about variable recitation notes in the '70s or '80s.

I still have to work to read these tongues that are so foreign to my ear. Have fun reading as we try to see how the 19th century Hebrew mind reads the Greek of the New Testament through my 21st century failing eyes.

Perhaps we are all an inside-outside Escher print made of one spinning electron everywhere and everywhen at once creating our own simulation of an imaginary reality in which we become flesh. (Is this an argument for letting children play video games? In the 19th century we were machines, in the 20th programmed machines, in the 21st, quantum decision makers composed of heavy wave-forms called particles, weighing down the universe together.)

I am having quite a time running my translations through first my own concordant data base (remembering how to bootstrap a new chapter) and then discussing the theological implications of translation with ChatGPT. It summarized my opinions and the difficulty for concordance quite accurately. Some words are unchanged over 3000 years, others not so simple. I have found all my notes and essays going back to the 1990s and leading up to the Hebrews conference in 2006. I wonder how I would read them today. Perhaps I will put the odd one on the blog.

And perhaps not. It was the beginning of the path and I don't discount it: In 2005 I worked directly from the Greek text using traditional commentaries like Vanhoye (above diagram) as my interpretive frame. Today I begin to read from a very different stance, having translated the Tanach and written books on the music and particularly the psalms. At the conference, I heard a voice saying -- how can you speak of me when you do not know my language? So today, a Hebrew philology underpins my considerations. I must now read Hebrews as a reader of the Hebrew Bible.

In 2006, I heard the theologians and Biblical Studies folks arguing tooth and nail in the classroom, voices raised but not in music, and I enjoyed the £1 Oban scotches in the University pub. What will be the bias in my approach today?